


wipe the dirt off your hands (take a drink of that promised land)

by redbrunja



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Time Travel, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-17 04:35:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14180748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: The close quarters of the bunker lead to some... incidents.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sharkflip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkflip/gifts).



> For sharkflip, who had a great idea about Flynn and Lucy walking in on each other in the bunker and let me steal it.
> 
> I am assuming that Lucy/Wyatt/Jessica resolves by Lucy being like 'oh, you're wife is alive again? CONGRATULATIONS I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU. WERE WE ABOUT TO START SOMETHING? NVM ABOUT THAT, I KNOW HOW MUCH YOU LOVE JESSICA, GO BE HAPPY, I AM TOTALLY FINE ABOUT THIS.' And Wyatt follows her lead and also is very happy to have his wife back again even if there are some lingering guilt and love regarding Lucy.

It was Lucy's fault.

She'd been with Rittenhouse during the six weeks that the rules for cohabitating the bunker were set, and she'd hadn't caught up yet. She didn't remember that she was supposed to put a chair in front of the door when showering until she heard the heavy scrap of the door opening.

She opened her eyes just in time to see Flynn step inside. It felt like her mind was on a delay. She was still thinking about the mistake she'd made when their eyes met.

Almost instantly, Flynn pivoted on his heel, exited.

He was gone before Lucy raised her hands to cover her breasts.

She felt an instinctive flash of anxiety. A man who was - her brain stuttered over what Flynn was to her and threw out _coworker-_ had seen her naked. But the emotion was muffled, a concern that belonged to a different life, a different Lucy. After all the bad blood and blood spilled, she didn't think knowing what she looked like naked would change... anything, really.

It had only been an instant. There was that partial wall between them. He probably hadn't seen much, anyway.

 

* * *

 

Garcia swallowed thickly, his hands in fists, standing stock-still in the dim hallway.

Lucy, her head tilted to the side, water sluicing along her body. He was tall enough that the dividing wall was easy to see over, and he'd seen _everything._ The soft swell of her breasts, pink nipples that begged for a man's mouth, the primal, inverted triangle of her pubic hair. He'd spent a lot of time thinking about Lucy, but his mind had focused on the sharp lines of cheekbones, the fire in her eyes -

There was the thought he needed to dose this inappropriate flare of lust: the reality of how she'd looked at him. Lucy had looked at him with empty eyes, the same expression she'd sometimes wear when she thought no one was watching her.

There was nothing arousing about a woman who didn't reciprocate one's desire. Remembering Lucy's blank look effectively quelled his body's reaction. Garcia was going to forget that he'd ever looked at Lucy Preston and wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and run his hands along her slippery skin. That was a momentary betrayal of his wife that would not be repeated.

Resolved, Garcia continued along the hallway.


	2. Chapter 2

Lucy looked at the two journals sitting on the linoleum-topped table. The one she still thought of as Flynn's, full of her handwriting, scraps of leaflets, flyers, postcards from all across history, and the empty one given to her by her mother.

Should she have been collecting supplementary material all this time?

Lucy frowned, made a mental note to ask Rufus or Jiya. She paged through the blank pages. How was she supposed to create this roadmap for Flynn? _Should_ she? Should she attempt to do better than the previous-yet-future version of herself had, when she gave it to Flynn and set his feet on this path–

Lucy gasped, jolting to her feet, knocking her chair back.

She swept up both journals and ran to Flynn's room. She didn't bother to knock, but when she slammed the door open the room he slept in was empty.

She'd just left the bunker's kitchen/longue, Flynn was forbidden to be in the Lifeboat's bay, which meant-

She skirted around the chair in front of the bathroom door, knocked rapidly, and then, urgency welling up inside her, she shoved the door open.

"Flynn!" she said.

He met her eyes, looking startled and angry under the spray.

"I know how to save your family!" she said.

No hesitation, no disbelief - Flynn stepped out of the shower and yanked his clothes on over damp skin, all his attention on her.

"We can just go back - to before they were killed - and warn them."

"Bruhl said that doing so was impossible," Flynn knelt down, laced up his boots with steady hands. "That it would destroy the mothership, and if it didn't, a person couldn't exist in the same time twice."

Lucy nodded. "So did Rufus. But-" she raised up the two journals. "I've _already done it."_

Garcia followed her logic: she'd existed in 2014, oblivious to Rittenhouse, a professor at Stanford when her future self had traveled to the past to give her journal to a grieving Garcia Flynn.

He grabbed her wrist and they ran for the lifeboat.

It was only as Lucy buckled herself in that reason reasserted itself.

"But- I mean, I might be a good idea to discuss this with Rufus and Mason," she considered, voice concerned.

Flynn didn't pause as he set the course. There was a tiny shampoo bubble clinging to the damp strands at the back of his neck that Lucy couldn't seem to look away from.

"They _are_ the experts and I could be–" she continued to babble.

They jumped back.

 

* * *

 

It had been the worst jump, even more disorienting than the very first one.

It hadn't helped that Garcia hadn't paused for a moment, pulling her out of the Lifeboat and along behind him like a kite, battered by angry winds.

She was reeling as they traveled through Zagreb, neat streets and brightly lit windows and a language that Lucy didn't understand.

It was only when Flynn, strode up the walkway, reached the porch and just.... stopped that Lucy caught up to him. She glanced sideways, so the expression of his face. She reached out and squeezed his hand. Flynn nodded and then knocked.

The woman who opened the door had short, wavy hair and a sweet face.

"Garcia!" Lorena's lips curved into a smile. "Did you lock yourself out?" she glanced at Lucy curiously.

Flynn reached out and gently touched the his wife's face, running the tips of his fingers along her cheek.

Lucy bit her lip and looked away. She didn't have the right to observe this reunion.

"...what's going on?" Lorena asked. "I thought you were upstairs?"

"Your husband still is," Flynn said, his voice rough. "Tell him to come down."

Lorena stepped back and called his name, without looking away from them.

Garcia Flynn from 2016 came down the stairs. For one instant he wore an open, content expression that she'd never seen on her Garcia Flynn, and then there was a gun in his hand and Lucy was _intimately_ familiar with how he looked when he was about to shoot someone.

Lucy stepped between them.

"Garcia, do you have a twin?" Lorena said, and Lucy could hear both concern and humor in her voice.

"No," her husband answered.

Behind her, Flynn spoke. "You're right about Rittenhouse but it's much bigger than you know now. You're unaware how widespread and evil they are. They're going to kill Lorena and Iris. The references to a time machine are literal - that's not a code."

Lorena looked at her husband. This is where Lucy would be babbling questions and demanding explanations.

"Get Iris," Lorena's Flynn said, and she immediately went up the stairs. Keeping watch of the two intruders in his home, he went to the hall closet, pulled out two duffle bags that were already packed.

Lorena came down, Iris hastily dressed and sleepy eyed, one hand in her mother's.

She looked between the two men in her living room, zeroed in on the one who hadn't been tucking her into bed five minutes previously.

"You look like my daddy," she said.

"Yes," Flynn said, sounded like his throat was full of broken glass. He crouched down.

Iris let go of her mother's hand, walked over to a future version of her father while her present one watched, hawk-eyed.

She examined his face, Flynn's eyes darting across hers like he was memorizing it. Then she leaned forward and Flynn swooped her up, holding her tightly.

It looked like it pained him to let his daughter go, to kiss her forehead and let her walk over to her parents.

Lucy's heart broke for him.

He stayed crouched on the ground, one hand over his face.

Lucy rocked on her heels and retreated from the living room. She ended up in the kitchen.

She stared blankly at the refrigerator, Iris's drawings and family photos attached with magnets.

She couldn't imagine what Flynn was feeling. She'd known that he hadn't planned to stay with his family if he got him back, but didn't know how he could stand it, to have them back for a moment and then watch them leave. If she ever got Amy back, she wouldn't leave her.

There was a landline on the wall. It was just after one in the afternoon in California.

If Amy was alive, she'd be watching over her mother while Lucy taught.

Lucy picked up the phone. After a few aborted attempts, she figured out how to call internationally, and then she listened to the phone at her mother's house ring, ring, and then her mother's modulated voce said hello.

Lucy hung up. She tried to swallow back the bitterness. It wasn't fair that somehow Wyatt's wife was alive, that she had figured how to save Flynn's family but no one, had any idea how to save her sister. The only person to blame was Rittenhouse, was her mother.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to hold back the tears, and then there was the sound of a muffled gunshot.

She ran for the living room.

There was already one corpse on the ground, one man leaning against the wall and clutching at his knee - even through his black tac gear, Lucy could see it was broken, bending the wrong way. Flynn was struggling with a third man.

Flynn got the man in a headlock, gave a brutal twist. There was a crack and his opponent dropped to the ground. Flynn reached down, pulled a gun from the man's belt.

The last Rittenhouse agent, leaning against the wall, started to beg in a language Lucy didn't speak.

She pressed her hand over her mouth and watched as Flynn shot him in the head, blood and thicker things splattering across the wall.

She was still looking at the blood splatter when Flynn took her by the wrist and led her out of the house and back to the lifeboat.

 

* * *

 

 They returned to 2018.

Neither of them said anything as the lifeboat settled.

Flynn slowly rotated his chair around, and then went to his knees before her. He pressed his forehead against her knees, trembling.

"Thank you," he said, his voice muffled.

Lucy stroked his hair back, at a loss for words.

"Lucy, I-" he lifted his head up, his eyes wet. He took her hand and kissed the back of it, her palm, the pulsepoint of her wrist.

Lucy sucked in a breath, her fingers still tangled in his hair.

There was a loud banging on the door, and she could hear Rufus and Wyatt both shouting her name, Wyatt following it up with threats to Flynn's life.

Flynn turned, keeping his face away from the door.

"Guys. GUYS!" Lucy shouted. "I'm fine. We're fine. Everything's... fine."


	3. Chapter 3

This one she was blaming on Flynn.

The chair _was not_ in front of the door.

The system didn't suddenly stop because it was 2:34 a.m. Flynn wasn't the only one with things keeping him up at night.

After hours of tossing and turning, Jiya slumbering annoyingly peacefully in the other cot, Lucy had had enough.

Her eyes ached, which is why she didn't go to the lounge and read. She thought a shower might relax her, so she wandered down the hall and into the bathroom. Someone else had the same idea.

She walked into a room full of steam and froze.

Flynn stood under the spray, face upturned, hair slicked back against his skull. He always looked tall, but Lucy's eyes caught on the lines of him, the strong arc of his nose, the graceful lines of his collarbones. The broadness of his shoulders, without clothing to hide them. She stared at wet, gleaming muscles and the white tracks of scars. Her fingers itched to trace those marks of violence.

The door swung shut behind her, closing with a loud clang.

Flynn's eyes fly open and Lucy's pinned by his dark gaze.

She stumbled backward, one hand going to the door handle. It's only as she pulled the door opened and darts through that she's able to tear her eyes away.

She spent several more hours that night sleepless on her cot, staring at the dark ceiling with her cheeks hot.


End file.
